Religion: Preview

Two of the three dogmas defined by the Roman Catholic Church since the Council of Trent (1545-63) have concerned the Virgin Mary: her Immaculate Conception (1854) and her Assumption into heaven (1950).* Last week the Very Rev. John A. Flynn, president of Catholic St. John's University in Brooklyn, told a Marian Year convocation that the Virgin might be due for still further doctrinal recognition within the next 100 years or so. It is "not unlikely," he said, that Mary will be "proclaimed in a definition of doctrine as Co-Redemptrix of the human race, that next the dogma of Mediatrix of all graces may be promulgated, and that finally the definition of her queenship, as participation with her Son in the power of ruling the World, may be proclaimed."

Theologians agree, Father Flynn added, "that these are definable. It is likely that all three of these may come to realization before another century passes because the importance of Mary in the universe has come more and more to the fore."